Hilton Head, S.C., July 28, 1862
I read your 4th of July reflections with much interest and on part of them my last letter to you had bearing. Our ultra-friends, including General Hunter, seem to have gone crazy and they are doing the blacks all the harm they can. On this issue things are very bad. General Hunter is so carried away by his idea of negro regiments as, not only to write flippant letters about his one to Secretary Stanton, but even to order their exemption from all fatigue duty; so that while our Northern soldiers work ten hours a day in loading and unloading ships, the blacks never leave their camp, but confine their attention to drill. There may be reasons for this, but it creates intense feeling here and even I cannot see the justice of it. The course of Sumner, Wade, Stanton, etc., have ruined us, I fear, in the war, by making success subservient to their preconceived plans of negro good, instead of allowing the movement to develope itself. I no longer see anything but our ruin on our success, and no escape from it save in our defeat as to the ends of the war. Still I do not lose faith, but go into the future as cheerfully, if, in my own opinion, a little more blindly than heretofore. I liked the innuendoes in Hawthorne’s article in the July Atlantic.
